(Crain's) — Excelerate Labs, the Chicago incubator for startups that had a successful test run in 2010, has landed $1.2 million to launch a three-year program this year.

While most of the program’s 25 investors are the same venture capital firms that backed Excelerate last year, there are two notable additions: Lightbank, the fund started by Groupon Inc. co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky, and Chicago-based OCA Ventures. The firms contributed varying amounts, with none in for more than $50,000 per year, Excelerate CEO Troy Henikoff said.

“We don't want this to be dominated by any one investor,” he said in an interview. “We want this to be a community effort.”

Last year, the program operated on $350,000 and helped entrepreneurs at the first crop of 10 start-up companies raise $7.2 million so far. The new class of 10 startups beginning the program this week will receive $25,000 each from Excelerate, up from between $15,000 and $20,000 last year.

Excelerate also said that each participant will have access to $50,000 in convertible debt from J. B. Pritzker's venture capital firm, New World Ventures. That was reported earlier today by the blog TechCrunch.